Rhythm games are a blemish on the blazer of games. There’s nothing fun about a giant quick time event telling you what to do and giving you the cue to do it. That’s not gaming, that’s being in special ed.  Luckily, Beat Hazard tries to switch up the concept, by building rhythm around a classic space shooter. It’s like someone said: “Hey, remember that game Asteroids you enjoyed so much, back in the day? Well, I completely raped it and here are the desecrated remains.” Naturally, I jumped in excitement to try that out, he said with a sneer.

Flashy space battles in Beat Hazard

Strangely enough, Beat Hazard doesn’t instantly suck like most rhythm games. Using rhythm as a catalyst for the entire game, your spaceship’s fire power and amount of enemies is built by the intensity of the music; any music. By picking up powerups, you can amplify the sound, your power or gain a multiplier to score higher points. But you can also stop firing and risk getting taken down to gain additional amplifiers. This adds a separate reward system that is thoroughly exciting and switches up the game from just blasting indefinitely. Enemies come at you in different sizes and shapes, with different weapons and there are even some boss fights, which are usually really intense.

Rank up and unlock new things in Beat Hazard.

This intensity is splattered in all kinds of ways on your screen, most notably by the very sparkling visuals. Just about anything in the game flashes uncontrollably and the fatter the beat, the more there is to flash about. This amplifies the intensity and gives the game an appealing feel, but the most intense moments get killed by the sheer overkill of brightness on your screen. Your little ship shooting billions of rays, combined with even more things exploding and stellar systems shining, will make you lose your bearings and before you know it; poof goes the ship. There is the option of lowering the glimmer, but for one it doesn’t really negate the blinding feeling and in addition, you get penalized for being a wimp. That’s like punishing the epileptic kid for having an attack. This is somewhat frustrating, because just dialing it down a little would’ve kept the excitement at an amazing level.

Sometimes, Beat Hazard becomes one giant cluster hump.

Controlling your ship is also just a step away from perfection. While you do get that epic Asteroids feel of playing the brightest iteration of the game ever, controlling your ship and its gun is just a tad too loose. It’s really hard to maneuver in Liberace’s star-studded apocalypse as it is, without the icy feel turning it into the Ice Capades. Again, this adds to the fervent feel that makes your heart skip many a beat, but it’s just not fine-tuned enough and that does take an entire chuck out of the fun. Adding a small control sensitivity setup again would’ve gone a long way, said Captain Hindsight.

Adding Asteroids in Beat Hazard, just because.

Yet, Beat Hazard is too damned exciting to let you give into frustrations such as these. Playing any track will make your pulse race to the beat and just playing a few minutes is jam-packed with more action than any other rhythm game. The sheer overkill of it all creates a mixture of challenge and fun that will keep you coming back for more; at least if you enjoy synthetic music, because Beat Hazard doesn’t feel the same for each track. The tracks that come with the game play great and other dance music will do equally well, but if you like guitars and actual talent, you might have to bite the bullet, as Machine Head said. Playing a rock, indie, hardcore or metal track just doesn’t coexist with the game as their digital colleagues. As you need to collect volume by playing and as the game flashes like Edward Cullen on Summer Solstice, most of the symbiosis goes lost when angry people are shouting in the background. But don’t fret; as soon as you change your hardcore ‘no hipsters’ mentality, you’ll be in your ship on the way to planet Awesome!

Beat Hazard: Epic Boss Battles may ensue.

Apart from the regular track by track Play mode, Beat Hazard also offer 2 Player mode, a relaxed Chill Out mode and a Survival mode, for you hardcore people. Here, you choose a music folder of your choice and set off to play as long as you can; which isn’t easy, as the ships really fly at you here. But if that isn’t enough, the game also has a series of different difficulty settings, with Normal just being the second step of5. You’ll get a run for your money on Normal, so expect to practice if you’d like to achieve greatness. Speaking of which, Beat Hazard also offers the obligatory Achievements for you trophy hunters.

Achieve achievements in Beat Hazard while you beat hazards.

In all, Beat Hazard is not only fun to play, it’s also thrilling. The integration of the rhythm system to the entire aspect of the game creates a synergy that locks you in a trance and adds tactical decisions to the mix. It’s funny how a beat drop will suddenly leave you with no weapons to fend off the generated enemies from the rhythm section. It just goes to show that every track really is unique and no 1 game will ever feel similar and that alone sets Beat Hazard above the garbage pile that is the rhythm genre. There’s no paid DLC, you just plug in and play whatever you want and you do it better than all those suckers with plastic guitars. Sure, there are a few imperfections and frustrations added to the extravagant mix, but anyone out to bob their heads and test their might at the same time, should give this a try.

Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

Girl Talk doesn’t really play music, so how the hell does one review an album like that? Either way, ‘Feed The Animals’ brings you the best in other people’s work. It’s a mixture of just about any genre imaginable, but just mostly hip-hop and pop, blended together in an electronic dance sound. Basically, mash together any popular song you could find since the invention of music and press them together for your nostalgic pleasure. Didn’t MC Lars once say: “The mash-up thing is so 2002?” Granted though; at least Girl Talk uses this cheap trick well and the mash-ups used sync fluently into each other and create an easily danceable track.

Well, that's a fashion statement. I'm sure there's some girl talk about that.

The entire album is meshed into one song by perfect transition and even repeating the whole thing will never really draw your attention; though I don’t know whether that is good or bad. I just don’t understand why you would give your tracks a title, as you’re just stealing other people’s work. If Girl Talk would really want to sell albums, they’d just put whoever they ripped off as the title and call it a day. From Avril Lavigne to Salt-N-Pepa, but even Metallica’s ‘Master Of Puppets,’ all your favorite tracks will get raped into one giant cluster hump. From memory, these artists passed the review in the quickly interchangeable songs: Air, Kelly Clarkson, Ludacris, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ice Cube, Underworld, Soulja boy, Lil Jon, etc. infinity.

Girl Talk likes to mash up his style like his music.

Differentiating each track might not really be necessary, as it’s all other people’s work anyways, but they did get a lucky shot by incorporating some of my secret shames. I was bumping my head to Fergie’s ‘London Bridge’ and had to admit that was pretty damned clever. But it’s the track ‘What It’s All About’ that captured my heart by combining Busta Rhymes’ ‘Got You All In Check’, Faith No More and even the Jackson 5; a fitting name for a track after all. Although I’m sure some Faith fans might find that to be blasphemy, but those people are idiots. Mike Patton is a weirdo and I’m sure even he’d approve of this mixture; so pipe down and enjoy rocking to the beat of strange remixes.

Seriously, I'm starting to wonder if that's even the same guy. And what's with that girl?

Ok, so this album is a blatant rip-off, more so than other electronic music, but at least there is skill to be heard in the theft. Remixing just about any recognizable track does capture your attention time and again and creates that easily danceable beat you’d al like your underage girlfriend to get nasty to. Perhaps if you buy this album she might even learn a thing or two as one of the tracks state: “I love having sex, but I rather get head.” If that isn’t the classiest quote to describe this album, I don’t know what is, n-word.

And yes, I like me some oldschool Busta Rhymes. Anyone who disagrees can suck one of my many appendages.

And yes, I listened and played through all the Girl Talk/Beat Hazard tracks.

Recommended Donation Between: $5-$300

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed.